In a new series, Martin Keady, our resident tennis historian, identifies five key things to look out for at each Major of the year, starting with the Australian Open.
1.The Possibility of a Historic Career Grand Slam Double
Never before in the history of tennis have two players, one male and one female, had the chance to complete the Career Grand Slam at the same Major, yet that is the position that Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek find themselves in on the eve of the 2026 Australian Open. Both of them need only the Australian title to complete a clean sweep of the four greatest prizes in tennis. And if Alcaraz achieves it, he would become the youngest man ever to do so.
Yet the odds are against a historic Career Grand Slam Double in Melbourne; indeed, it is entirely possible that neither Alcaraz nor Swiatek win the tournament. Alcaraz, of course, is going into his first Major ever without Juan Carlos Ferrero after their still-astonishing split in December, while Swiatek has started her Australian campaign relatively poorly, losing twice in singles even as Poland claimed its first ever United Cup title.
The Australian Open would love to become the first of the four Majors to have two players complete a Career Grand Slam Double. However, it might yet be the case that the next Career Grand Slam in tennis comes in Paris, not Melbourne, where Jannik Sinner will be trying to win his first French Open after last year’s heart-breaking defeat in the final against Alcaraz.
- Jannik Sinner Going For A Hat-trick of Australian Open Titles
Before then, Sinner will be attempting to “three-peat” in Melbourne. And although he lost out in the One Million Dollar One Point Slam to Australian amateur Jordan Smith, he still has an outstanding chance of winning a multi-million dollar, multi-point Slam at the end of the next fortnight.
Over the last two years, the Italian has proven himself to be not only the King of Melbourne, by winning the last two Australian Opens, but the King of Hardcourt Tennis full-stop. In 2024 and 2025 he won every hardcourt Major, with the sole exception of last year’s US Open, when Alcaraz broke his long winning run at hardcourt Slams in Australia and the US.
Now, with Alcaraz likely to be affected in some way by the absence in his coaching box of Ferrero, of whom he said ahead of this weekend’s first round, “It is probably thanks to him I’m the player that I am right now”, Sinner’s chances of completing his first hat-trick of titles at a Major have surely increased. He and Alcaraz are firm favourites to meet again in the final for a record fourth successive Slam in a row. And given the fierce intensity of their rivalry, the greater stability of Sinner’s coaching set-up (with Darren Cahill deciding to remain as his coach for 2026) might just tip the odds in his favour.
- Aryna Sabalenka Trying To Win a Third Title in Melbourne
This time last year, it was Aryna Sabalenka who was trying to “threepeat” at the Australian Open and she made it all the way to the final before losing narrowly to Madison Keys. Having lost out on that chance of a hat-trick, she will surely be utterly intent on winning a third Australian Open title in four years in 2026.
Even in the current, ultra-competitive era of women’s tennis (four different women won the four Majors in 2025), Sabalenka remains first among (near-)equals. Forget the Career Grand Slam that Alcaraz and Swiatek will be competing for over the next few weeks; last year, Sabalenka had a chance to win a Calendar Grand Slam (i.e. an actual Grand Slam, to use the original terminology of tennis, which has now largely been forgotten). However, after losing in Melbourne to Keys, she also succumbed to Coco Gauff in the Paris final and lost to Amanda Anisimova in the Wimbledon semifinal, before finally winning the Major that her year-long dominance merited by retaining her title at the US Open.
Now, after the undignified farrago of the so-called “Battle of the Sexes II” at the end of 2025, Sabalenka will surely be more determined than ever to assert her dominance over the rest of women’s tennis. At the event where she won her first ever Major three years ago, she has every chance of reasserting her stranglehold over the Women’s Singles event at the Australian Open.
- Novak Djokovic’s Last Best Chance To Win a 25th Major
It is now more than two years since Novak Djokovic won his 24th Major Singles title, at the 2023 US Open, and the 2026 Australian Open is probably his last best chance to make it a neat quarter-century of Slam crowns, which would prove that he is (statistically at least) not only the best male tennis player of all time but the best tennis player of all time, male or female.
Djokovic, of course, has already triumphed in Melbourne 10 times. However, the odds are firmly against him winning an 11th Australian Open title, simply because in the last two seasons he has been unable to get past both Alcaraz and Sinner at a Major. He has enjoyed success over Alcaraz in particular, most notably at last year’s Australian Open when he somehow overcame the brilliant Spaniard in an epic quarter-final. However, as I wrote at the time, increasingly the great Serb is winning only spectacular battles and not Major wars.
12 months on from his last victory over either of “The Huge Two”, as Alcaraz and Sinner have now become (based not on their total of Major wins but on the way in which they have separated themselves from the rest of men’s tennis), it is increasingly hard, if not impossible, to see Djokovic bucking that trend. And if he cannot do it in Melbourne, where he typically enjoys the kind of rabid support, especially from the Serbian-Australian community, that Federer and Nadal enjoyed virtually everywhere else, it is hard to see him doing it anywhere.
- The Heat – Will It Be On?
As I wrote in my review of the lowlights of the 2025 season, by the end of the year flies were starting to fall like tennis players, such was the spate of illness, injury and sheer burnout that was devastating both the men’s and women’s tours. Now, after the shortest off-season in all major professional sport, tennis will resume in earnest at what is invariably the hottest (literally) Major of the year.
So far in Australia, temperatures have been reasonably mild and certainly nothing like the scorching heat of recent years, most notably 2020, when so many bushfires were consuming so much of the Australian bush, and beyond. Nevertheless, there is every chance that the Australian summer will start to burn through in earnest and then there is likely to be the usual litany of withdrawals as players wilt under the Antipodean sun. More than any other Major, the Australian Open is about the survival of the fittest and this year is likely to be no exception.
Main Photo Credit: Mike Frey-Imagn Images
